Ingredients

3 ounces rum -- white rum

1 teaspoon creme de menthe -- green creme de menthe

3/4 ounce lime juice

1 teaspoon superfine sugar

3 dashes Bitters -- Angostura bitters

Spring of mint

Collins glass

Instructions:

Shake the ingredients (use rum from Trinidad if you have it) briefly with cracked ice, then strain into a Collins glass 3/4 full of shaved or finely crushed ice and swizzle. (How do you swizzle? You stick a barspoon or, of course, swizzle stick -- paddle-side down -- into your drink and spin it between your palms, moving it up and down, until the glass frosts up.) Then slip in that sprig of mint and serve it forth. This one is also good in bulk: Just pour the ingredients, multiplied by eight or so, into a pitcher full of shaved ice, swizzle away until the pitcher frosts, and pour 'em out into ice-filled glasses as above.

The Wondrich Take:

You don't need network TV to demonstrate that the line between truth and make-believe is a fuzzy one. Take "The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy," P.G. Wodehouse's classic 1924 short story. Bertie Wooster and his pal Biffy -- "as vague and woollen-headed a blighter as ever bit a sandwich" -- find themselves, for reasons complex, at the London British Empire Exhibition (rather grander then than it would be now, what what), under circumstances that cry out for the balm that heals. Fortunately, the West Indian section comes kitted out with a "rather jolly" Planters' Bar. But let's let Bertie tell it:

"The man behind the counter...seemed to guess our requirements the moment we hove into view. Scarcely had our elbows touched the wood before he was leaping to and fro, bringing down a new bottle with each leap. A planter, apparently, does not consider he has had a drink unless it contains at least seven ingredients, and I'm not saying, mind you, that he isn't right. The man behind the bar told us the things were called Green Swizzles; and, if ever I marry and have a son, Green Swizzle Wooster is the name that will go down in the register."

Now, we've always regarded the Green Swizzle as a beautiful fiction of Wodehouse's, on a par with the manna of the Israelites and that honeydew stuff that Kubla Khan was always knocking back, if you believe the poets. Its formula is in none of the old drink books we know of. The other day, however, we were perusing one of those Englishman-abroad books that the Brits used to turn out back when they owned about a quarter of the world. There's our gentleman -- one Alec Waugh -- in Trinidad, bellied up to the bar, and whaddaya know -- the Green Swizzle. A local specialty, at least in 1930. Unfortunately, no recipe is provided.

Still, armed with the essential piece of information that the G.S. hails from Trinidad, we may proceed to attempt a reconstruction. Trinidadian rum, sure, and not a little of it. It'll have to be white, to let in the color -- which will have to come from green crème de menthe, since, in those balmy days before they isolated the Midori molecule, that was the only green stuff around. You'll need lime juice, of course -- what's a swizzle without lime juice? -- and some sugar to balance it (you don't want to rely on the crème de menthe for that; a little goes a long way). And since we're talking Trinidad, we've got to dash in a little of the island's most famous product, Angostura bitters. Add ice and a sprig of mint and Bob's your uncle -- seven ingredients, on the nose. While we might not name our firstborn after it, the younger siblings have cause to be nervous.